Great Plains Sawfly Survey
Project Directors: Jeffrey Bradshaw, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
The wheat stem sawfly (WSS), Cephus cinctus, has increased in abundance and geographic range throughout the Great Plains. It is now considered a key pest of wheat, with grain profit losses exceeding $350 million in the Northern Plains and many impacted acres from Colorado, Nebraska, to North Dakota, and now Kansas. This pest can reduce wheat yield substantially. In addition, losses in crop residue from sawfly cutting greatly threatens the resiliency of dryland cropping systems by threatening soil moisture storage and soil conservation gains made by no-till cropping practices within these systems. Few IPM tools, tactics, or strategies for WSS management have been broadly adopted throughout the region.
While there are not many commercialized IPM solutions available to manage WSS, limitations to adoption throughout the region are not well defined and some limitations may be hypothetical (e.g., inherently low yield in WSS-resistant wheat varieties) rather than real.
The Great Plains Sawfly Survey Working Group will inform needs and routes to IPM adoption, will hold a wheat IPM forum to take place at the 2023 ESA Annual Meeting at National Harbor, Maryland, and create a white paper that details the current status posed by the WSS to U.S. agriculture.